Exodus - The Mars One Project

As I was finishing my novel over the summer, I heard about the Mars One Project and their idea for colonizing Mars. I always had a sneaking suspicion the first plans for colonizing the Red Planet would entail putting more colonists on the planet than they would allow to return, but my rational was based more on what had happened in the past when countries had gone out to colonize distant lands. Granted the technology may not have been there for people to return to their country of origin, but any real effort throughout history always seemed to leave people with some sort of chance to see their homeland. There are exceptions as in the case with the HMS Bounty with the mutineers not wanting to be found, or extremes for motivating the crew as with Cortez and his quest for Aztec gold, but burning the ships to abandon all hope might not be the best strategy for colonizing a new world. There are plenty of compatibility problems between crew members flying out into the vacuum of space for that long, http://oig.nasa.gov/old/inspections_assessments/061998.html , or people who have tried to live within biospheres here on Earth for any extended length of time that will doggedly haunt these future colonists. http://www.oswego.edu/~schneidr/CHE300/envinv/EnvInv01.htm
Another concern would have to be the availability of vehicles. NASA alone has gone through two distinct phases of space flight, from the development of their Apollo Rocket to their Space Shuttle. Each have had substantial gaps between them as they developed the next generation of rockets (in the current case we wait the building of the Orion Rocket - http://www.livescience.com/24343-orion-nasa-spaceship-2014-test-flight.html). Any interruption in these types of services would translate into a delay in getting much needed supplies to the martian colony.
There are no easy answers, but volunteering for marooning yourself on another world might be tantamount to saying one would like to live the rest of their days in Antarctica or the Atacama Desert of Chile.
I'm all for colonizing Mars. I would just like to see the success for such an ambitious venture eclipse any dark scenarios yet written by those of science fiction. The reports of pulling half mad and starved individuals out of Biosphere One here on Earth should wake people up to these very real concerns.
Throughout our history, the act of colonization has allowed us to advance as a species, and would do so again if given a real opportunity on the Red Planet.
After all there will be no going back.
Deadline for applicants....August 31st, 2013
http://applicants.mars-one.com/